Microsoft Promises Project Scorpio Gaming Boost For 1080p HDTV Owners

If things go to plan, Microsoft will release an upgraded console capable of playing games at a 4K resolution later this year. It is called Project Scorpio and it will have more powerful components than what is found in today's Xbox One S consoles. There are many questions surrounding the unreleased console, including whether or not gamers will need a 4K television to take full advantage of it.

Turns out that will not be the case, not if Windows Central's "trusted sources" know what they're talking about. According to those sources. Microsoft will highlight numerous benefits of playing on Project Scorpio using a Full HD 1080p display. One of them is better efficiency (and assumed better performance) through the use of Shader Model 6 (SM6) and improvements to shader compilers. This will affect not only Project Scorpio, but also all existing Xbox One consoles.

Another benefit is that existing games that utilize dynamic scaling on Xbox One consoles will be able to reach their target resolutions at a greater clip on Project Scorpio. This is something that will not require any patches or updates, just the new console.

Project Scorpio will drop less frames than today's Xbox One consoles. What that means for existing games running on 1080p HDTVs is that they will look better and perform better on the upgraded the console at the same resolution.

Finally, the sources say that games featuring True 4K assets will also have graphics enhancements on 1080p displays due to the console's supersampling technology. It's a pretty common thing for games to trade anti-aliasing quality for better performance in other areas, which is why gamers might notice jagged edges. This will be improved on Project Scorpio.

All that said, 4K TV owners will benefit the most from Project Scorpio. The console is said to come with a 4K Blu-ray player with HDMI 2.0a output, along with Wide Color Gamut and High Dynamic Range (HDR) support. It should also have a fairly robust lineup of launch titles that take advantage of True 4K.